April - May 2012

FROM THE DESK OF...

Inspiration from John Cleese

A HUGE hello from the desk of Idiots of Ants: we are the four man Sketch comedy group here performing in the 2012 NZ International Comedy Festival for the first time ever! We are stupidly excited!

The last time we went abroad to do a show was the Montreal and Toronto Comedy Festival's back in July 2009. We had a great time and not only did we get to meet one of our biggest idols, we were also lucky enough to perform with him, interview him and hang out with him backstage. Who are we talking about? The legendary Mr John Cleese. That’s who. So… we’re hoping to meet someone just as brilliant and exciting this time round when we’re in Auckland. Any takers?

Meeting Cleese was great - we firstly watched him rehearse for that evening’s show and a few things became clear; he took comedy very seriously. Each line, joke or pun had been analysed and was delivered with comic timing that would put most to shame. He was also happy to be on the receiving end of most of the jokes. During the course of one scene his back catalogue was rubbished, he was hit over the head with a plank and then run over by a mobility scooter. It was all book-ended with those familiar exasperated screams, shouts and infuriated swearing that has made audiences around the world laugh for the last five decade. Nobody swears quite as well as John Cleese!

It felt a bit like it was all a dream. He shook all our hands and we remember looking across at each other and realising we had the exact same smile pasted across our awestruck faces. This man was in Monty Python and he’s talking to us! It will always be one of the biggest highlights of our careers. He asked us about the show we were doing and we talked about some of our sketches. We complimented him on his performance and amazingly he was genuinely interested in any feedback we had and how it could be improved.

We wanted him to come on stage at the end of our love song sketch and do a little bit of interaction with us. We rehearsed it and immediately afterwards he asked us if we were happy with what he did. It was this constant communication and openness that really surprised us all. Of course it was okay! He’s John Cleese!

The full interview can be seen here and to get tickets for our NZ shows go here.

See ya soon!

Idiots of Ants.

Write Back

Shaun D Wilson

Such a pity that Idiot of Ants aren't coming to Wellington. Finally a sketch group comes for the festival but it's Auckland only. Aucklanders should definitely take advantage of their exclusive access to them, as well as Milton Jones, and Jason Bryne.